


i will sleep on my feet

by Lauren (notalwaysweak)



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-24
Updated: 2014-09-24
Packaged: 2018-02-18 14:48:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2352221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notalwaysweak/pseuds/Lauren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU where Stuart's a nurse who has to deal with inappropriate feelings towards a patient. Contains discussions of racism and homophobia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will sleep on my feet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DracoAries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DracoAries/gifts), [damalur](https://archiveofourown.org/users/damalur/gifts).



> TBBT characters do not belong to me and I am making no money off this work of fan fiction.
> 
> All my thanks to Amber (afullmargin) for her beta work (and for coming up with 'Nurse Nerd'); anything that's still wrong is my fault, not hers.
> 
> * * *

There’s a couple dressed for prom who’ve just come in, if people still go to prom in their late twenties. He’s covered in blood from an apparent head wound; she’s dazed and her right arm is in a sling. She tries to reach out as he’s wheeled away and cries out, her arm flopping.

“Whoa, now.” Stuart gets to her fast, sits her down and crouches beside her. “Steady on. Don’t move that arm. Can you tell me your name?”

“Penny.” Tears are trickling steadily down her cheeks. “Please, I need to go with him.”

“It’s okay, Penny... we’re gonna take care of him.” He raises an eyebrow at the EMT who brought her in and gets a hand signal back; she’s had a minimal shot of morphine to take the edge off, and her arm needs to be properly set. “Just sit still.” He checks her pupils; they dilate normally and she blinks at the light. “Is he your boyfriend?”

“Raj? No.” Penny smiles a little. “He doesn’t bat for my team. Or I don’t bat for his. Actually, I’m not even sure we play the same sport.”

Stuart nods along. It probably makes sense in her head, and she’s not completely incoherent, just shaken up a little. “Is there someone we need to call?”

“I called my wife from the ambulance.” Penny blinks slowly. “Do I stay here? What if she can’t find me?”

“It’s okay,” Stuart tells her, flipping to a new page on his clipboard. “I happen to be pretty good at helping people find each other around here. I need to get your name and some details really fast, and then you get to go to X-ray. Do you have your driver’s license?”

Penny smiles wanly. “Like it’s not obvious my arm’s broken?”

“We just like to have photographic evidence. You never know who’s going to come in here just to get a cute plaster cast for their friends to sign.” Stuart copies down her name and address details from her license. “Penny Winkle... sounds very poetic.”

“It’s part of why I changed names...” She’s starting to sound drowsy. Stuart, against his better judgment, darts away for thirty seconds to get her a cup of coffee. He doesn’t think she has a concussion but he doesn’t like how dazed she seems.

“What’s the other part? Of why you changed names,” he prompts her.

She gulps half the cup, barely flinching at the bland vending-machine taste, before answering. “You’ll see if you meet her.”

Stuart finishes her paperwork and hands her off to another nurse who’ll take her down to X-ray. Normally he’d start processing someone else in, but there’s an unexpected lull; instead, he goes down the short hallway to where her friend has been taken.

He’s got a doctor working on him and a nurse assisting. Stuart hovers in the doorway. They’re picking glass shards out of his face and neck, dropping them one by one into a kidney bowl. The soft _plink_ as each one lands is barely audible over the heart monitor, but he can hear them all the same.

“Either wash up and come in, or get out,” the doctor snaps, and Stuart exits stage left. He’s seen enough to know that the guy’s going to be all right, that when Penny gets out of X-ray and tucked away in one of the wards, he can tell her that much.

He’s not sure what to say about the myriad tiny scars her friend – Raj? – might be left with.

* * *

Stuart sorts out another half dozen inbound patients, three of whom have food poisoning from bad Chinese and gripe about whose fault it was between bouts of retching. The cops accompany two GSWs in, which is pretty interesting, but that’s when Stuart gets shooed to the break room.

He manages to lie down for a whole two minutes before rolling back to his feet and going in search of Penny Winkle, the girl with the name like poetry.

On his way, he gets out his cell and makes a couple of calls. There’s something he needs to be sure about before he finds her.

* * *

She’s been moved to a ward; a bed near a window, not that the view’s much to speak of; it’s dark and raining outside, and she’s got her eyes closed anyway.

She has company.

“I know visiting hours are over.” The visitor turns tired eyes to Stuart. “I’ve already been kicked out once.”

Stuart opts not to try kicking her out again. “You’re her wife?”

“Leslie Winkle.” Leslie’s holding Penny’s left hand with her right but offers him a left-handed shake that feels less awkward than he’d expected. “You triaged her.”

“How do you know?”

“I read her chart and your nametag, Nurse Bloom.” She gives him a very direct look. “You can tell me off later. Right now, you need to tell _her_ that she hasn’t killed anyone.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Stuart sinks down on the end of the bed by Penny’s feet. “Of course she hasn’t.”

“Nobody would tell me anything,” Penny whispers, her eyes opening part way. “When I asked... they said because we weren’t related they couldn’t tell me.”

Stuart’s not supposed to tell her either, to be fair, but does so anyway. “The last I saw of your friend, he was alive, out cold, and the doctors were just working on getting the glass off him.”

Penny sighs. “I thought...” Her eyes close again. “I thought he was dead.”

Leslie puts her left hand on Stuart’s knee, holding him to silence until Penny’s breathing slows to the cadence of sleep. “Did they tell you she was driving?”

“So I heard.” Stuart tucks his right hand under Leslie’s left and glances out of the window at the drumming, pounding rain. “I also heard that it wasn’t her fault that the crash happened.”

“I thought she skidded. I thought she was speeding.”

“She wasn’t,” Stuart insists. “I checked. Whether she remembers or not, she crashed that car because somebody threw a full beer bottle through the windshield.”

Leslie’s fingers draw into a death grip on his hand. “Seriously?”

“The police don’t know who did it yet. They’re checking footage from traffic cameras in the area. But none of this was your wife’s fault, Mrs. Winkle.”

“Doctor,” Leslie says. Then, “Sorry. Automatic.” She sighs, easing up on his hand, and looks down at Penny. “She was taking Raj out as a favor to me. She hates university functions, but I begged her to go to this one with him. His department’s underfunded and I thought if she could do some of the socializing for him then maybe he’d get a little more attention.”

“Penny said he doesn’t swing that way,” Stuart says without thinking.

Leslie gives him a wry smile. “All the more reason to have a pretty woman on his arm. Caltech’s policies are all very equal opportunity. My insurance will even cover this visit for Penny. But that doesn’t mean that the good old boys and girls who fund us are quite so open minded.”

Stuart’s pager goes off. “I have to go.” He stands up and squeezes Leslie’s hand. “If someone comes to kick you out again, maybe you should head home and get some sleep.”

“Yeah, because that’s going to be really easy.” Leslie gets up anyway, letting Penny’s hand slip from hers and leaning down to kiss her forehead. “Did the cops say anything about the bottle thing being racially motivated?”

“They weren’t sure.”

“Sure they weren’t.” Leslie glances sidelong at him as they walk out of the ward. “You know, interracial marriage has been legal in the US since 1967.”

“Uh huh...” Stuart senses she has a point and that she’s not just giving him a history lesson.

“And ‘gay’ marriage has been legal for a while now... practically forever, if you’re from the East Coast. So, in theory, people should be less assholes about seeing two women together... or a white woman and a brown man.”

Stuart puts his hand on her shoulder. “M- _Doctor_ Winkle, I hear what you’re saying. I promise you, your wife and your friend will get the best of care while they’re here. And if I hear anything else about – about whether a suspect turns up, or anything, I’ll let you know. But right now I have a job to do, and you have to go home and rest.” He gives her his best reassuring smile, which is not as upbeat at three in the morning as it is when he’s actually slept.

Leslie nods slowly. “Okay.” She pushes the elevator call button. “Do you think I’m paranoid?”

“Honestly? I wish I could say yes. Unfortunately, I don’t think you are.”

* * *

The pager takes him back to Emergency, where he does another three hours; this time it’s nice regular stuff, although one little girl comes in with measles and Stuart has to summon up his very best diplomatic straight face to not break her loudly anti-vaxxer mother’s nose.

Sunrise marks the end of his shift, but he has one last patient to check in on before he can go home.

Raj – he’ll stick to that, since it’s what Penny called him, and he’s not sure he could pronounce the whole thing that's on his chart without having heard it at least once – has been moved to a private room, which here means only four patients and each bed has _two_ visitor chairs. Stuart sinks into one of said chairs and looks at Raj’s sleeping, gauze-splotched face.

He spends a lot of time dealing with strangers, people who come into his life and leave again as quickly.

Plenty of people think dating a nurse is cute, up until the point where he has to pull yet another back to back overnight shift and can’t do anything afterward but sleep as long as possible. A couple of times he’s gone out with people who have a decided medical kink (which, to be fair, he isn’t entirely opposed to helping them indulge, within reason). And then there was one guy who was just as sweet as pie until he found out that no, Stuart wasn’t actually going to help him get restricted drugs.

So, sometimes the connections linger, for good or bad.

Mostly, though, it’s just strangers.

The thing about his job, though, is that it’s damn near impossible to do without compassion. (He can think of one or two counter-examples, but frankly they’re assholes.) So if someone gets even a little way into his head, like Penny, like Raj, they stay there until he’s sure everything’s okay.

Penny... Penny will be fine. She’ll go home later today and he might not even see her again. She’ll go home and Leslie will wait on her hand and foot for six weeks or so, until the cast comes off, and then she’ll be fine.

He doesn’t know about Raj. He’s seen people take a whole wine bottle to the forehead and come away bruised but okay, and he’s seen people who got a mostly empty champagne glass dashed across their faces – in one of those stupid, melodramatic gestures – and came out looking like the Joker.

He’s hoping this won’t be the latter. Hell, he always hopes for the best; even when he’s seen the worst, shift in and shift out, he always hopes for the best, because if he starts assuming the worst-case scenario every time, he might as well just go down to the morgue and put himself on a slab.

But something about this, about Penny’s guilt and Leslie’s fear, something about that makes Stuart hope just a little harder.

Raj stirs a little and whimpers in his sleep. Stuart reflexively checks his chart; he’s got enough morphine in his system to mean that it’s probably not real pain, just that something under those bandages has pulled a little when he moved.

The prognosis looks pretty good, going by the chart. There’s no mention of reconstructive surgery or anything dire. Still, Stuart’s pretty sure that when he comes back in tonight, Raj is still going to be here.

Maybe he’ll even be awake.

* * *

Stuart slaps at the alarm clock when it blares into life at three that afternoon. He used to not be a morning person. Since he started working as a nurse, he’s realized that he’s just not a getting out of bed person. His shift isn’t until six – well, five-thirty, since there’s a meeting he’s supposed to go to – and he sure as hell doesn’t need three hours to get ready to go to work. He manages to hit the snooze on the third try.

Drowsing, the cynical part of his brain chattering at him about how pathetic it is to do nothing but work, eat, and sleep, Stuart hazily tries to remember why he’d set the alarm so early. No date... he doesn’t need to go grocery shopping... the meeting’s _definitely_ five-thirty, not four-thirty...

Then he remembers starkly white bandages against warm brown skin, and rolls out of bed before the alarm can sound again.

* * *

Visiting hours reopen at four on most of the wards after a two hour rest period that Stuart’s always thought was more for the sake of the staff trying to do their jobs than for the patients to actually catch a nap. He’s unsurprised when he walks into Raj’s room and the two visitor chairs are already taken up at four on the dot.

Leslie looks up and gives him a tired smile. Penny looks up and gives him a totally blank look.

“Oh, hey,” she says, in a tone of voice Stuart’s heard before from women who were trying to remember if they’d slept with him or not. (Usually not.)

“We met last night... picture me wearing scrubs...” He’s wearing street clothes. He learned years ago that wearing scrubs equals working, and protesting about being two hours early does nothing. They’re too often short-staffed.

Penny’s face lights up. “Oh my God, of course!” She gets up and gives him an awkward one-armed hug. “Thank you so much for everything.”

“So this is the guy you two were talking about?” Raj’s voice is soft, with more than a hint of an accent, but it doesn’t sound like there’s been any permanent damage to his throat. Of course, his chart would have said if there had been any wounds that went that deep, but it’s still nice to confirm it himself. Raj has some fabulous bruising showing up around the edges of the dressings now, dappling his brown skin with purple.

“Um, hi. I’m Stuart Bloom... I’m a nurse here at Sacred Heart.”

Raj’s forehead wrinkles, what Stuart can see of it. “Sacred Heart? Did I walk into an episode of _Scrubs_?”

“No, just one of the twenty or so hospitals in the States with the same name.” Stuart shoves his hands into his jeans pockets. “How’re you feeling?”

“Itchy,” Raj says. “Mostly my throat.”

“If you want my medical advice, your mistake was probably using Sonic the Hedgehog as a razor.”

Penny and Leslie look a little dumbfounded, but Raj grins – and even though it’s obviously painful for him to smile that wide, it’s adorable as hell. “You didn’t tell me he was a nerd!”

“Yeah, well, last night he wasn’t wearing a Batman t-shirt.”

Stuart snickers. “I was wearing an Avengers t-shirt. It was just under the scrubs.”

“Keeping the geekery close to your heart. I approve.” Raj smiles again and then winces.

“Careful. You don’t want to, um, open anything up...”

“Just how bad is it, anyway?” Penny interrupts. In a way she looks like she’s in more pain than Raj is.

Stuart retrieves Raj’s chart again. “Well, the recommendation is that he stays at least one more night for observation, also because tonight is lasagna night and that’s easily the best of the crap that they serve here.” He hears both the women laugh and tries not to smile at his own bad joke. “But no, it doesn’t look too bad... I guess you can feel you have a couple of stitches just below your left ear.”

“Yeah. They itch.”

“Yeah, well, it’s all gonna itch for a while.” Stuart looks up from the chart and catches Raj’s expression, what he can see of it. “And I’m sorry... look, I’ll be right back. I’ll see what I can do to help.”

He can hear Penny start whispering to Raj the second he turns his back, but doesn’t try to listen in.

* * *

Leslie and Penny volunteer to go get coffee while Stuart redresses Raj’s wounds. He doesn’t think either of them are particularly squeamish, so it’s a little surprising, but then he figures maybe they don’t want to see their friend in pain.

Raj is quiet as Stuart removes each dressing. Some of the cuts to his face are so superficial that he really doesn’t need to re-cover them. He sure isn’t going to be the mess of scars Stuart thought he might.

“A lot of these really do just look like shaving cuts,” he says, smoothing hydrocortisone cream over Raj’s skin. “This should ease the itching.”

Raj gives him a sleepy smile. “Thank you, Nurse Nerd.”

“That’s not the worst nickname I’ve ever had...” Stuart covers one cut on Raj’s forehead and another on his right cheek with butterfly stitches, although that’s probably being overly cautious; they don’t look like they’re going to come open.

His neck is another matter. There are only two sutures holding the wound under Raj’s ear closed, but it’s still not pretty.

“Oh, man.”

“What?”

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but this is a classic vampire bite. I’m gonna have to stake you.”

Raj giggles. “Just be sure to thrust hard so it’s over fast.”

Stuart stops still, his hands hovering over the small stack of supplies he brought in. “I think someone overprescribed your morphine.”

“Mmmm.” Raj closes one eye in a lazy wink. “Just keep telling yourself that.”

Stuart spreads more cream over Raj’s neck, rubbing it in carefully, gloved fingertips sliding slickly over his skin. Raj watches him do it, dark eyes fixed on the way his forearm flexes, as far as Stuart can tell. He takes his time re-covering those cuts that need it, but even so, he’s done before Leslie and Penny get back.

“Shouldn’t you be helping other patients?” Raj sounds sleepy still. Stuart wonders if it’s the painkillers or whether he always sounds a little out of it.

“I’m not actually on the clock yet... that was just because... well, you said you were sore.”

Raj’s eyes open a little wider. “Oh my God. That’s really nice of you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a nurse... ‘nice’ is sort of in the job description...”

“Not judging by the woman who came in before to take my blood pressure. She told me off for not drinking my apple juice.”

Stuart laughs. “That doesn’t narrow it down, man. Changes in appetite are important to document. If I’d been here at lunch I might have said the same thing.”

“You’ll be here for dinner, though, right?”

“Oh... maybe not. Dinner starts at five but I don’t know what time this wing’s rostered, and I have a meeting at five-thirty.”

“Fine, fine. Just bring me a midnight snack.”

“Yeah, sure. We’ll have crappy prepackaged cookies from the late nineties and instant coffee. Except I can’t give you caffeine at night, so you’ll have to have warm milk.”

“Sounds like a feast,” Raj says, and gives Stuart another radiant smile.

Penny and Leslie reappear, and Stuart hastily stands up. “I should go... let you have your visit.”

“Sit,” Leslie snaps. “I didn’t wait fifteen minutes in line to bring you a latte and not have you drink it.” She snags one of the chairs from by the next patient over’s bed and pulls it closer.

“Do I get a latte?” Raj asks.

“You get apple juice,” Penny says, and then looks thoroughly puzzled when Stuart and Raj start laughing.

* * *

He stays another few minutes after clearing away the wound dressings and cream, thanking Leslie about five times for the coffee that’s exponentially better than the stuff the hospital provides. They mostly talk about work – they all know what Stuart does, but he finds out that Leslie and Raj both work over at Caltech, and that Penny’s a pharmaceuticals rep.

“How come we’ve never met before?” he wonders aloud.

“It seems like you’re kind of a night owl. I work days. Plus I usually have two functioning arms and I’m not crying.”

“My job makes me cry sometimes,” Stuart says, not sure even as the words leave his mouth why he’s admitting the fact.

“It would be weird if it didn’t, sweetie,” Penny says, patting his hand.

She gets up to walk him out when he finally stands up, which is good, because he has a question that he can’t ask in front of Raj.

“Does he always make so many innuendoes?”

Penny laughs. “It’s his way of hitting on you.”

“Oh.” Stuart may have seen that coming, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not having trouble processing it.

Penny pats his shoulder this time. Even in the space of the twenty or so minutes that he’s actually interacted with her while she’s not in shock, he’s noticed how tactile she is, always touching people, stroking their arms, playing with Leslie’s hair. The next few weeks are going to be hell on her for that reason alone, never mind anything else. “If you’re not interested, you can just tell him. He won’t mind. Well, actually, he probably won’t _notice_... I wish I’d had painkillers that good.”

“You did. Just not as high a dosage,” Stuart says automatically.

“You know what I mean. Anyway, you said to me last night that you’re good at helping people find each other... do you ever go looking for yourself?”

He wants to tell her that’s not how he meant it, that he was speaking purely in terms of the labyrinthine layout of the hospital, but then he’s left it too long and she just smiles at him and goes back to Raj’s bedside.

Stuart sighs at himself and goes down to the cafeteria to grab a sandwich before his shift begins.

* * *

In seven years of working at Sacred Heart, he’s only traded shifts around maybe three times before. Part of it is because, well, the dates for Comic-Con get released way before the event and he has time to schedule leave. Part of it is because he’s good at triage and likes the constant business of Emergency, even though it means he’s seen a lot of heartbreaking stuff over the years. But hell, that’s true wherever; if anything, Pediatrics can be even worse. Mostly it’s just because there’s no real reason for him to screw around with scheduling. He knows how much it can bug people.

But tonight, on his way out of the meeting, he spots one of the ward nurses who he’s heard complain before of boredom, and impulsively asks, “Hey, Danielle... you want to trade tonight?”

Danielle nods immediately, but then catches herself and gives him a skeptical look. “What’s in it for you? Have you developed a fetish for waking people up every two hours to make sure they’re not dead?”

“Yeah... I call it _insomnophilia_.”

“Oh my God, _please_ go upstairs before I have to hear any more puns. Tell Marie I said it was all right.”

Stuart smiles at her and heads for the elevator, a spring in his step.

* * *

East Private is possibly the quietest part of the hospital, especially on the night shift. Stuart settles at the nurses’ station with Marie, who accepts his explanation – wanting to give Danielle a fair turn in Emergency – without question and then asks him if he knows any seven-letter words for _excitement_.

She does the first round of bed checks at six-thirty: there are sixteen beds in their particular section, but only nine of them are currently occupied. Stuart goes over the list to find that five of the nine are patients who would probably be in Geriatric if they weren’t rich enough for the relative privacy up here. It makes him wonder for a moment how come Raj is up here but Penny wasn’t, until he realizes that even with great insurance there’s really not much point going this fancy for a clean fracture.

Five elderly patients who, judging from the list, will probably sleep right through the night even if there’s an earthquake. Two patients over from Oncology; they always run out of room down there. One woman who’s recovering from a hip replacement – aged twenty-five, _ouch_. Stuart’s pushing forty but all of his joints still work perfectly well, thank God.

And Bed 4-A. Raj, who now has his room to himself, Stuart notes. Apparently the one other patient in there was discharged just before five. Interesting. Maybe he can sneak Raj in that midnight snack after all. Or maybe he’ll just let the guy sleep; sleep in a hospital is a rarer commodity than most people expect. Even if you’re exhausted, the person beside you might be crying in pain; the person across from you might stop breathing, necessitating all the bells and whistles.

That’s as cynical as he’s going to let himself get tonight.

“All quiet on the western front?” he asks Marie as she returns to the desk.

“Believe me, hon, they know how to use their call buttons if they need us,” Marie says, easing back down into her chair with a wince.

“Something wrong?”

“I could use a new neck.”

Stuart gets up immediately and starts working on her neck and shoulders, mostly using his thumbs and palms. Marie sighs happily and leans into his touch.

“I should get you up here more often,” she says.

“I just can’t resist the glamor and bright lights downstairs.”

* * *

Stuart does his first round at eight, saving 4-A for last. Four out of five of the geriatrics are asleep already. He spends ten minutes talking to one of the oncology patients, who’s been having some horrible mood swings thanks to her treatment. The woman with the hip replacement has meds to take, and Stuart brings her orange juice instead of water when she asks for it because he knows how sour a taste Zoloft can leave in the mouth. He snags a spare pudding cup out of the refrigerator at the same time.

When he finally reaches Room 4, Raj is watching a rerun of _Two and a Half Men_ , but switches the TV off as soon as Stuart reaches his bedside.

“Oh, you can keep watching.”

“Nah... it’s terrible anyway, I don’t know why they keep paying people to produce it.” Raj turns that bright smile on Stuart again. “I’d rather talk to you, anyway.”

Stuart sits down and passes over the pudding cup. “Here... it’s chocolate.”

“Oh... that’s really sweet, you didn’t have to do that.” Raj has a little trouble with the foil lid and Stuart automatically reaches to open it for him, only realizing once he’s done it that he’s treating Raj like a... well, like a patient.

“Sorry.”

“They’re so hard,” Raj complains. “Why are they so hard to open?”

Stuart opens his mouth to say something about better storage conditions and not wanting to make it too easy to spill desserts all over patients. What actually comes out is, “Well, you know, only the truly worthy deserve seconds, and there has to be some kind of challenge...”

Raj snorts. “You opened it for me. Doesn’t that make _you_ the worthy one?”

“Okay, fine.” Stuart dips the spoon in and takes a mouthful. Of all the food available, the desserts are the most edible, which is really not the most ideal of situations. He offers the spoon to Raj. “All yours.”

“Dude, gross. You probably got nurse germs on that.”

Stuart sputters. “ _Nurse germs_?”

Raj grins and takes the spoon. “They’re like cooties. Didn’t they teach you anything at nurse school?”

“Yeah, actually, I did learn one thing.” Stuart gives Raj a cootie shot to the forearm, punctuating the dots with two hard pokes. “There. Now you’re immune.”

“You are without a doubt the most interesting healthcare practitioner I’ve ever met.” Raj eats a spoonful of the pudding, licking the spoon in a way that has to, just has to be intentional, tongue darting pink against the smeared chocolate, triggering a warm burst of arousal somewhere south of Stuart’s navel.

“You can’t have met that many healthcare practitioners, then.”

“My father’s a gynecologist.” Raj spoons more chocolate into his mouth.

“That’s _one_.”

“I grew up surrounded by doctors.” Raj offers the spoon back to Stuart, who takes it without thinking. “My parents wanted me to be a doctor. I guess they kind of got their wish.”

“Were they okay that you were a PhD instead of an MD?” Stuart absently eats another spoonful of Raj’s dessert.

“That part’s fine. The part where I won’t move back to India and start fathering grandchildren for them is the problem.”

“You’re only, what, thirty-two? You’ve got plenty of time left to do that. If you want to.”

A flicker of uncertainty crosses Raj’s face. “Penny said she told you... never mind.”

Oh, damn. Stuart’s pretty sure he knows exactly what Raj means, and now he’s sending mixed signals. But then again, Raj _is_ a patient, which categorically makes him someone with whom Stuart shouldn’t be flirting anyway.

Raj holds his hand out for the spoon. Stuart bypasses it, scooping up another mouthful and conveying it straight to Raj’s lips. Raj opens his mouth eagerly and Stuart feeds him the spoonful.

He’s pretty sure that’s enough to set the mixed signals straight. Or not straight, as the case may be.

The problem with night shift – with every shift – is the paperwork. Its clarion call is not to be ignored and, as much as Stuart would like to sit by Raj all night, he has to leave after ten minutes, empty pudding cup in hand.

“Will you come back later?” Raj asks, blinking sleepily, looking oddly vulnerable even with the reduced number of dressings covering his skin.

“It’s my job,” Stuart says. “But even if it wasn’t, I’d come back anyway.”

* * *

Marie comes back from her round at nine-thirty to report that everyone’s asleep.

“Alert the churches, it’s a miracle.” Stuart closes the game of solitaire he was half-heartedly playing. “It’s so _quiet_.”

“You’re telling me. Dani’s probably living it up downstairs. She’s still young enough to think Saturday night is party night.”

Stuart rolls his eyes. “I don’t think I was ever that young. Hey, aren’t your kids going to be that age soon?”

“Bite your tongue. Javi’s thirteen and Silvia’s ten.”

“I remember you had Silvia right before I did my student round here.” Stuart sighs. “And here we both still are.”

“What, like you’d rather be anywhere else?”

“No,” Stuart says, maybe a little too defensively.

Marie just laughs at him and starts adding the shorthand notes from her clipboard to the patient files on the computer. Stuart’s fine with data entry via the tablet, but Marie has never quite trusted the cloud.

One of the call buzzers goes off just before ten.

“I _swear_ they were all asleep...” Marie moves to get up.

“I’ll go. It’s okay.” Stuart stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Thanks. I want to finish this.” Her nod is ambiguous enough that it’s not clear whether she means the patient files or her crossword. Either way Stuart’s happy to leave her to it, because the light on the board is by Bed 4-A.

* * *

The bedside light is on but dialed down to its lowest brightness. It’s still enough for Stuart not to need his flashlight. Raj is sitting up a little, sheets rumpled around his waist, displaying a lovely stretch of bare skin. He has a scattering of chest hair and dark, dark nipples that Stuart kind of wants to bite. The small gold curved barbell piercing his navel is a surprise; a welcome one.

“I think there’s a monster under my bed.”

“There’s no room; the lifting mechanism takes up too much space.” Stuart sits down. “Did you call just to talk to me?”

Raj has the good grace to look guilty. “Maybe.”

“Marie said you were asleep.”

“I _was_. But I woke back up and my face itches.”

“I’m not surprised.” Stuart brushes a fingertip over Raj’s cheek; it rasps over light stubble.

“I don’t suppose you guys have razors?”

“Yeah, we do... but I wouldn’t advise it, you’re pretty cut up.”

Raj gives him a pleading look. “What if you did it for me?”

Stuart gives in. “All right, fine.”

It’s actually an easy job compared to some of the shaves he’s had to do for surgery; he can remember a few patients hairy enough to explain Bigfoot sightings. Raj’s really is just a shadow across his cheeks and chin, readily remedied with just a disposable razor – at which Raj pulls a face.

“We don’t exactly have the budget for Gillette. Hold still.”

Raj holds still. Stuart moves the blade across his skin, moving easily with the shave gel; it’s also pretty generic but has an indefinable sweet smell to it. Raj closes his eyes and sighs a little as Stuart works his way across Raj’s face.

“Tilt your head back a little.”

Raj obediently does, and Stuart does his chin, carefully avoiding the sutures below his ear and a couple of other spots still covered with light dressings.

“You might be patchy for a while.”

“I can live with that.”

Stuart finishes up by wiping Raj’s face clean and patting it dry. Raj keeps his eyes closed; Stuart thinks he’s falling asleep again.

He is rapidly disabused of this notion when he leans in to dim the light again, and Raj’s eyes open again. They’re inches apart. A breath apart; he can feel Raj’s soft exhale on his skin.

Stuart licks his lips. “Um. Better?”

“Almost.” Raj lifts his hand, touches Stuart’s cheek, and gives him the second required to think _this is such a bad idea_ before the space between them closes.

Raj’s mouth still tastes of chocolate pudding. He kisses softly but insistently, his hand slipping from Stuart’s cheek to the nape of his neck. Stuart braces himself against the flimsy mattress with one hand and returns the gentle touch with the other, stroking Raj’s hair. He lets his tongue slide slowly against Raj’s, eliciting a low murmur from the other man. Raj squeezes the back of his neck and Stuart presses the kiss harder, winding one of Raj’s curls around his finger and tugging lightly.

They break apart with a good deal of reluctance. Raj’s eyes have gone dark with desire; Stuart thinks they’re probably a mirror of his own.

“I really shouldn’t be doing this,” Stuart says.

“I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

Stuart touches Raj’s cheek lightly. “I’ll be right back.”

“Wait–”

Stuart doesn’t, moving quickly to the door. He thinks if he stops to hear whatever Raj might have to say, he’ll lose his nerve.

* * *

Marie’s chewing on her pen.

“Your dentist will kill you,” Stuart scolds her.

“No, he’ll be glad for the work. What’s up with 4-A?”

“He says he’s too dizzy to shower, so–”

“Sponge time.” Marie gives him a somewhat dreamy smile. “Lucky you... at least he’s not eighty.”

“Marie, you’re married.”

“Sure I am... but that doesn’t make me blind.”

Stuart laughs. “Right. Anyway, I’ll be a while... will you be okay on your own?”

“Hon, I could run this place in my sleep. Pretty sure I _have_ , a couple of times. Go on and make the man happy.”

_If only you knew_ , Stuart thinks.

* * *

Raj looks worried when Stuart walks back in, but then his gaze shifts to the bowl Stuart’s carrying on his hip and a slow smile spreads over his face.

“Hel _lo_ , Nurse.”

“Quiet.” Stuart nudges the door as far closed as he dares and then sets the bowl down on the table by Raj’s bed. He pulls the curtains shut around the bed, going so far as to clip them together just to be safe. “I thought maybe this would make you a little more comfortable so you can get to sleep.”

“Right.” Raj sounds like he profoundly disbelieves. But when Stuart sits by the bed and starts on his right arm, the lecherous expression on his face fades away, leaving him looking crestfallen. “Oh.”

“I was trained to do a thorough job.” Stuart works his way up Raj’s arm inch by inch, taking his time. He reaches Raj’s shoulder, and instead of going around the bed to do Raj’s left arm, he leans across Raj instead. It turns what he’s long made himself regard as just another part of the job back into an intimate act and, judging by the slow flush that colors Raj’s face and neck, Raj has realized the same thing.

“That feels good,” Raj murmurs.

“Good... just relax...” Stuart starts on Raj’s chest, rubbing slow circles over his skin, pausing frequently to wring out the sponge and re-wet it. Practice has taught him just how much he can soak it to be useful without dripping everywhere. Raj’s chest rises and falls under his hand, breath hitching a little when the sponge grazes over his nipples. Stuart sneaks in a soft pinch to one of the small brown peaks, making Raj gasp, and puts on his best poker face when Raj looks at him.

“ _That’s_ not relaxing.”

“Mmmm,” Stuart says noncommittally.

He works his way down Raj’s front, to just above the waistband of the soft blue sleep shorts that are all Raj is wearing.

“These aren’t hospital issue,” he says, flicking the elastic lightly.

Raj nods. “Penny brought them in for me. She wanted me to be as comfortable as possible.”

“Sounds fair.” Stuart remembers the tremor in Leslie’s voice and the pale terror on Penny’s face before he’d told them Raj was fine and isn’t going to argue the point for a second.

Besides, it’s not like he’s adhering to hospital policy all that closely right now himself.

Stuart folds the sheet toward himself, leaning over the narrow bed to work his way up from Raj’s left foot. Raj squirms, makes a discontent sound, and then giggles when Stuart touches his foot.

“Are you really ticklish, because I can skip this.”

“Just a little.” Raj wriggles again and Stuart moves on rather than risk getting kicked in the face. He’s been there before and getting his nose broken isn’t the most fun way to spend an evening.

He works his way up Raj’s calf and then his thigh, his fingers slowing to appreciate the smooth muscle there, right up to the hem of Raj’s shorts. He makes sure Raj’s skin is thoroughly dry and then tucks the sheet back over that leg, earning a complaining noise from Raj.

“Don’t want you catching cold,” Stuart says.

“Yeah. Because it would be totally horrible if I got sick and had to stay here.”

Stuart just moves on to Raj’s right leg, folding the sheet neatly out of the way. The front of Raj’s shorts has a distinct heavy bulge, which Stuart ignores for the time being, turning away a little to start at Raj’s right ankle. He’s wearing an ankle bracelet, thick silver with a butterfly on it.

“Cute.”

“My sister gave it to me.”

He doesn’t have to elaborate when; the butterfly’s wings are faded rainbows.

Stuart doesn’t slack off just because he’s almost done, making long slow strokes up Raj’s calf and then moving onto his thigh. As before, he stops just below Raj’s shorts, his fingertips brushing just a little way up under the material. Raj is watching him intently, his mouth open slightly; as Stuart glances at him his tongue darts over his lips.

Stuart wrings out the sponge and sets it down on a square of paper towel beside the bowl of water, and then dries Raj’s skin, moving the scratchy towel as gently as he can. Raj’s hips lift and he draws in a long, slow breath.

“Usually I’d get you to roll onto your side now and do your back; do you want me to?”

Raj’s voice is rough around the edges. “I’d prefer you stick to the front.”

Stuart nods, having expected this, and stands up.

“Wh–”

“I have to change the water,” Stuart says, and doesn’t bother to hide his grin at Raj’s wail of protest.

* * *

He comes back with clean, properly warm water, to catch Raj restlessly palming himself through the thin fabric of his shorts.

“Hey, stop that... you’re going to get yourself dirty...”

“You’re cleaning me up anyway,” Raj retorts.

An idea strikes Stuart; he sets the bowl of water down and reaches down the side of the bed. Matter-of-factly, he pulls Raj’s hand away from his erection and slips the soft restraint around his wrist – the ones more properly used to keep patients from harming themselves rather than getting themselves off. He pulls the strap tight and secures it, and Raj lets out a low moan, writhing a little.

So much for the hospital corners on the bedsheets.

Stuart repeats the process with Raj’s left wrist, which Raj actually _holds out_ to him to be strapped down, and then just stands and admires his handiwork for a moment: Raj, shirtless, pulling a little against the restraints to test them, arching his back, the outline of his cock clear and solid in his shorts.

There are so many breaches of protocol and the rules here that if anyone so much as gets a glimpse of this he’ll be _profoundly_ fired.

At the same time he kind of wishes he could take a photo for posterity.

Stuart sits back down by the bed and forsakes dissembling any further in favor of giving Raj a good, hard squeeze through his shorts. Raj moans again and then bites his lip and looks anxiously at Stuart.

“You can make a little noise, but not too much.”

“ _Ohhhh_...”

Stuart takes his time, rubbing and stroking Raj through the cloth, until Raj’s ass is lifting right off the bed and his lip is taking a real beating from how hard he’s trying to stay quiet. The next time that Raj’s hips roll up, Stuart pulls his shorts down, getting them down to Raj’s knees with ease born of practice. Raj doesn’t need to be asked to lift his feet so Stuart can get the shorts right off.

With them out of the way, he dunks and squeezes the sponge, starting where he left off, near the tops of Raj’s thighs. Raj squirms and bucks and generally tries to get Stuart to touch him properly, but Stuart’s sticking to his original plan and works his way inward slowly. He’s fascinated by the way Raj’s cock moves even without being touched, the occasional strong pulse making it bob a little, the veins’ darker traceries standing out. Between how hard Raj is and his supine position, the tip of his cock keeps brushing up almost to his navel, leaving small wet marks on his skin.

Standard procedure dictates that he should ideally have worn gloves the whole time, and _definitely_ for this particular area. Stuart figures he’ll just use a bucket of Purell after.

When he finally relents and strokes Raj’s cock from base to tip with the sponge, Raj draws in a deep shuddering gasp and strains against the restraints. His ass bucks up off the bed and for a second Stuart thinks he’s going to come right away.

But Raj settles back down, his chest rising and falling fast, and Stuart keeps moving his hand, working up a thin layer of soap bubbles before rinsing the sponge and cleaning the soap away. He eases Raj’s foreskin back, being particularly careful with the sponge over his glans, noticing with some amusement that the moment he wipes Raj’s pre-come away it’s replaced by more.

Raj is practically panting, jerking his hips in short needy movements, and when Stuart finishes up and takes the sponge away he lets out an indignant whine.

Then Stuart leans in and replaces the sponge with his mouth, and Raj makes a choked-off sound, accompanied by the soft slap of the restraint straps against the sheets.

“Oh, God!”

The vague lingering taste of soap is quickly replaced by the stronger taste of salt. Stuart drags his tongue over the head of Raj’s cock, licking at the slow steady flow of wetness there, listening to Raj murmur soft curses. He slides his left hand over Raj’s warm skin and stops where he can flick the gold navel bar with his thumb; his right hand joins his mouth on Raj’s cock to squeeze the base while he works the shaft with his lips and tongue. Raj is going wild, trying to thrust into Stuart’s mouth, but Stuart has the upper hand and pins him down, taking Raj in at his own pace.

He lifts right off of Raj’s cock and Raj whimpers like he’s been betrayed, but then Stuart leans down to run his tongue over Raj’s drawn-up balls and Raj presses close against his mouth, a shiver running through his body. Stuart keeps teasing Raj there a little longer, licking and sucking, listening to the muffled noises Raj makes as he tries to keep quiet, and then relents and takes Raj’s cock back into his mouth.

“I can’t – Stuart, I–”

Stuart backs off for a second. “What?”

“I can’t keep _quiet_ ,” Raj admits. “Feels too good.”

Stuart considers this, and then reaches up with his left hand to cover Raj’s mouth. He can feel Raj’s lips warm and wet against his palm, and feels the vibration as Raj gasps.

If they get caught like this he won’t get fired; they’ll just bag him and send him straight to the morgue.

He returns his mouth to the task at hand, finding a rhythm of fast but deep sucks that makes Raj huff hectic-fast breaths over his hand. He’s relying more on his right arm for balance now, but he can still move his right hand enough to complement the long movements of his mouth. Raj is gasping against his palm and rolling his hips up, pushing into Stuart’s mouth, and Stuart goes with it, letting Raj take back a little control. The taste of salt grows stronger in his mouth. Stuart squeezes and strokes and sucks and feels Raj riding with his every movement, and he wishes he had a hand free to take care of himself.

When Raj comes he bites down on Stuart’s hand. Stuart barely notices, so focused on swallowing and squeezing a little more, sucking Raj dry.

“Holy – oh–” is all Raj can manage when Stuart takes his hand away. His eyes are barely focused, his tense body relaxing slowly back against the pillow as he comes down.

Stuart wipes up a stray drip or two with his fingertip and pops it into his mouth, sucking it clean, before moving to undo Raj’s restraints, leaning over to do his left wrist first, then his right.

The second Raj’s right hand is free it goes to the front of Stuart’s pants, groping him shamelessly through his scrubs, and Stuart has to hold back a moan of his own.

“No – you shouldn’t–”

Raj hooks a finger into his waistband and rolls onto his side, tugging Stuart toward the head of the bed. Stuart stumbles the couple of steps and then Raj is freeing his cock from its cotton prison and swallowing him whole.

He doesn’t have time to worry about the potential damage to Raj’s sutures. He comes too fast, fingers digging into Raj’s curly hair, biting down on the side of his other hand, making a second set of toothmarks in his skin.

Raj pulls his mouth away with an obscenely wet noise and smiles lazily up at him. “Three desserts in one night... I’m spoiled.”

Stuart tucks himself away, hands shaking, and moves to get Raj’s shorts back on him and fix the sheet and blanket over him, striving for some semblance of decency. Thankfully Raj’s neck looks fine except for a little reddening where the stitches have pulled a bit. Raj lets him do it, eyes drooping closed, an immovable smile on his lips.

“That was amazing,” he murmurs.

“Your healthcare benefits at work.”

Raj snickers and reaches for Stuart again, this time to pull him into a kiss. He can taste himself on Raj’s tongue; the inverse is probably true as well, and it doesn’t deter either of them for a second.

“You know how people steal towels from hotels? Do they ever steal nurses from hospitals?” Raj asks, and Stuart just laughs and kisses him again.

“I’ve got to go,” he says softly. “We’ll get caught.”

“Stuart... that really was amazing,” Raj repeats, and Stuart feels an odd little flutter in his chest at the sound of his name on Raj’s lips. “Can this – can we see each other again? When I get out?”

“Yeah. Definitely.” Stuart kisses Raj’s forehead and draws the thin hospital blanket up to Raj’s neck. “We can talk about it in the morning. Right now you need to rest.”

“Mmmm...” Raj is already drifting off.

Stuart gathers up the sponge bath paraphernalia, opens the curtains, and moves quietly out of the room.


End file.
